Later this week, Penguin is publishing London: The Information Capital: a compendium of more than 100 maps, graphics and other data visualisations, concerning the workings of Britain’s capital. They’ve very kindly sent us a preview.

One of the more striking series of graphics the book contains is “Relationship Status”: a series of maps showing how the single/married/other tend to congregate in particular bits of the city. From that we learnt that the third of Londoners who are single are heavily concentrated in the inner city.

This, we suspect, is a function of age. Single Londoners are overwhelmingly likely to be young, and consequently are more willing to share a house with half a dozen strangers in exchange for proximity to cool stuff. The co-habiting demographic is slightly older, and so ends up slightly further out, in areas where they can afford slightly more space:

Smug marrieds are relatively rare in inner London, but tend to dominate the suburbs.

As do London’s presumably-not quite-as-smug widowed community.

But age breaks down as an explanation when you look at the distribution of those Londoners classified as “separated”, who seem to cluster in the western half of the Lea Valley around Tottenham. We suspect that relatively cheap housing is a factor here:

Similarly, the faintly baffling “married but living apart” demographic gathers both in down-at-heel areas like Upton Park and Wembley, but also ultra-rich Kensington. Answers on a postcard, please.

Finally, in the name of completeness, here’s a final map showing the distribution of London’s divorcees.

London: The Information Capital by James Cheshire and Oliver Uberti is published by Particular Books on 30 October.